natch writes "While rummaging through some old records at an antique store I found some turn-of-the-century Victor Record Company pressings. The label on the back laid out the terms of use, something similar to an EULA. In today's modern world of RIAA lawsuits and DRM, it's interesting to note that similar tactics have been in use by record companies for over a century, restricting your right to use what you purchased. The label clearly states that unless the record was sold for at least one dollar, there is no license to use it."

Mateo_LeFou writes "Gulf News has a nice piece exposing the last couple generations of Apple's DRM strategy (you didn't really think they were abandoning DRM, did you?). Article focuses on how quickly the tactics are worked around, and how nasty the latest one is: purchased iTunes now have your personal data in them. Author suspects that this is to prevent you uploading them to a network."

P. Rivacy writes "If you recall, last month we discussed Congress's attempts to outlaw the already illegal NSA wiretaps authorized by the President. The White House is now using delaying tactics to derail the passage of that bill. Their tactic is to stall on providing documents related to the President's warrantless wiretapping program, despite requests from the Senate Intelligence Committee that is currently reviewing the proposed legislation. '"Another critical priority for congressional oversight is government wiretapping of Americans, conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and, illegally, under the President's warrantless wiretapping program," Senator Russ Feingold said. "When the program was finally placed within the FISA process, an opportunity arose for the Administration and the Congress to move forward, under the law. Unfortunately, the Administration has yet to demonstrate a real interest in doing so."'"

An anonymous reader sends us to a BBC article about a British film likely to attract the attention of civil liberties supporters. The film, Taking Liberties , is a documentary about eroding civil liberties in present-day Britain. It will be showing in cinemas in major cities across the UK starting next weekend. From the article: "Director Chris Atkins wants Taking Liberties to shake the British public out of their apathy over what he sees as the dangerous erosion of traditional rights and freedoms. 'This film uses shock tactics. We needed to be unashamedly populist... Once you give up traditional liberties such as free speech and the right to protest you are not going to easily get them back,' says Atkins."

newtley writes "The University of Ohio was putting a brave face on being #1 on the RIAA hit list, but it now appears they have caved in to RIAA intimidation. Now, 'It appears that many institutions are simply prepared to wash their hands, refusing even to question the tactics of the industry,' let alone giving students meaningful legal assistance, says Ohio lawyer Joe Hazelbaker. He's written to OU associate director of legal affairs Barbara Nalazek saying, 'Ohio University has an obligation to protect the privacy of its students and their records, which includes directory information.' The Recording Industry vs. The People blog is hosting a letter universities whose students being attacked might want to consider."

Reader Anonymous Coward the younger sends in a link to an article up at Mises.org on the market functions of piracy. The argument is that turning a blind eye to piracy can be a cheap way for a company to give away samples — one of the most time-proven tactics in marketing. The article also suggests that pirates creating knock-offs might just be offering companies market feedback that they ought to attend to. (Microsoft, are you listening?)

Phanatic1a writes "New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is suing Dell, alleging bait and switch financing tactics, false advertising, and 'numerous other deceptive business practices relating to their technical support services, promotional financing, rebate offers, and billing and collection activity.' According to Cuomo himself, 'At Dell, customer service means no service at all.'"

An anonymous reader writes "A C|Net article discusses the technological innovations being used by the porn industry to ensure they stay relevant (like streaming HD-quality feeds and remote interaction), as well as profitable. Live performances and cutting-edge technology combine to ensure a steady stream of revenue in the age of free downloads. 'Now Kink.com is on the cutting edge of the fight against video piracy. While mainstream entertainment outlets like Viacom and NBC complain noisily about YouTube, Kink.com, with neither the resources nor the mainstream appeal of its giant counterparts, is in an even tougher fight: Protecting the content it produces that's continually copied and reposted on the dozens of Web sites that traffic in poached adult material.'"

InfoWorldMike writes "EU commissioner Neelie Kroes has lashed out at Microsoft in comments to European parliamentarians Thursday, saying it is 'unacceptable' that the company continues to gain market share using tactics that were outlawed in the Commission's 2004 antitrust ruling against the software vendor. 'Three years later Microsoft still hasn't complied with the main demand imposed by the European antitrust ruling: that the company share interoperability information inside Windows at a reasonable price to allow rival makers of workgroup servers to build products that work properly with PCs running Windows.'"

Arti writes "Last week the hacker spoke, raising questions for many about how game companies should deal with 'out of game' tactics. What about the game companies themselves? The man behind Kugutsumen.com alleged that CCP employees had been involved too intimately with the game's top alliance, Band of Brothers (who, ironically, have publicly described themselves as 'omnipotence itself'). These claims were made based on posts apparently hacked from the alliance's private forums. CCP promised to look into the allegations. Now they report in a post that many players say is inadequate and does nothing to address a crisis of confidence in CCP's oversight of its employees. Developers need to understand the games they make, and deserve to enjoy them, but how far? And what should a company do when an issue like this pits it against some of its own customers?" Blues News has an excellent summary of the thread's contents, distressing though they be.

Though it would be hard to judge by past reviews, I really do like simple games. The straightforward nature of Burnout Revenge is, in my mind, one of the best ways you can present a game. It's with a decided note of frustration, then, that I have to report my distaste for Capcom's latest offering - Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. Demos for this title have been downloaded endlessly since last year's E3, and in the format of a one-level demo there's a lot to like. How can you go wrong with the formula of a devastated Earth, giant bugs, and mechs? By fronting the game with an unlikable protagonist and following up with AI that alternates between mindless and cheap, Capcom fails to deliver on the promise of any of those concepts. Read on for my impressions of another simple game that I really wanted to like ... and don't.

Arti writes "Eve Online is famous for hosting the world's first virtual IPO, and also for its Byzantine 'meta game', in which players create fake characters and accounts to infiltrate each other's organisations for intelligence, theft or sabotage. More recently the game has seen the rise of Kugutsumen an intel blog whose creator has been accused of using real-world hacks to obtain secret information from other player forums and private messages. Some players are up in arms at the use of such out-of-game tactics. On the other hand, Kugutsumen claims these techniques have uncovered evidence of corruption. Quite aside from the legal ramifications of attacking other people's web forums, should game companies tolerate forms of 'play' that involve out of game illegality? Should they attempt to monitor and punish these kinds of activity using sanctions in-game, where the company writes the rules? This ties right back in to the discussion of Real Money Transfer we've been having over the past week. Where does the line between 'play' and 'cheating' lie?"

jlbrown writes "In a new benchmarking paper, MIT professor Mike Stonebraker and colleagues demonstrate that specialized databases can have dramatic performance advantages over traditional databases (PDF) in four areas: text processing, data warehousing, stream processing, and scientific and intelligence applications. The advantage can be a factor of 10 or higher. The paper includes some interesting 'apples to apples' performance comparisons between commercial implementations of specialized architectures and relational databases in two areas: data warehousing and stream processing." From the paper: "A single code line will succeed whenever the intended customer base is reasonably uniform in their feature and query requirements. One can easily argue this uniformity for business data processing. However, in the last quarter century, a collection of new markets with new requirements has arisen. In addition, the relentless advance of technology has a tendency to change the optimization tactics from time to time."

Erik Moeller writes "According to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, oil company ExxonMobil 'has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.' The report compares the tactics employed by the oil giant to those used by the tobacco industry in previous decades, and identifies key individuals who have worked on both campaigns. Would a 'global warming controversy' exist without the millions of dollars spent by fossil fuel companies to discredit scientific conclusions?"

gregleimbeck writes "Spam volume soared another 35% in November, an e-mail security vendor said Thursday, and the month saw spam tactics that reduced the efficiency of traditional anti-spam filters. 'There's been a huge increase in spam volume,' says David Mayer, a product manager at IronPort Systems, 'from 31 billion spams a day on average in October 2005 to 63 billion in October 2006. But in November, we saw two surges that averaged 85 billion messages a day, one from Nov. 13 to 22, the other from Nov. 26 to 28.'"

twitter writes "The Register and others are examining a New York Times effort to eliminate bias from technology reporting by not echoing paid opinions. (Other coverage here.) They target Microsoft specifically. InfoWorld has an insightful summary of the two sides of this old debate. Fake think tanks, dubious sponsored research, and Astroturf are not considered but should be. Companies using these tactics deserve to be held at arm's length, but that's hard to do when the company is also a monopoly able to make or break any 'expert.' It would be refreshing to see the New York Times discover the FSF, opensource.org, EFF, and other sources of computing expertise."

microbee writes "On LKML's periodic GPL vs. binary kernel module discussion, Andrew Morton hinted that he favors refusing to load binary modules in 12 months. Greg Kroah-Hartman then posted a patch to do exactly that. Surprisingly Linus chimed in and called it 'stupid' and a 'political agenda,' and even compared it with the RIAA's tactics. Later in the same thread Greg withdrew his patch and apologized for not having thought it through."

Trent Lucier writes "If you've browsed the web design section of any bookstore lately, you've seen him staring at you. The blue hat. The mustache. The blinding neon background. He's Jeffrey Zeldman, publisher of the influential web development magazine, 'A List Apart' and author of the book Designing With Web Standards (DWWS). The first edition of the DWWS was published in 2003, and now 2006 brings us an updated 2nd edition. In a market flooded with XHTML, CSS, and web standards books, is DWWS 2nd Ed. still relevant?" Read the rest of Trent's review for the answer.

Lumpy asks: "Lately there has been a HUGE push by Certified Microsoft Professionals and their companies to call clients and warn them of the dangers of open source. This week I received calls from 4 different customers that they were warned that they are dangerously insecure because they run Open Source Operating systems or Software because 'anyone can read the code and hack you with ease' they are being told. Other colleagues in the area also have noticed this about 3 Microsoft Partners or so they claim have been going out of their way to strike fear of OSS in companies that respond with 'yes we use Open source or Linux' when the sales call comes in. I know this is simply a sales tactic by these companies that will remain nameless, but how do I fix the damage caused by these sales tactics? I have several customers that now want more than my word about the security of the systems that have worked for them flawlessly for over 5-6 years now with minimal expense outside of upgrades and patching for security. Does anyone have a good plan or sources of reliable information that can be used to inform the customer?"

Last month we asked you for questions for the makers of Warhammer Online. The tone of the response made it obvious that many readers were concerned about where the company was taking the Warhammer world. Their responses should, at least somewhat, put those of you frustrated by what you've seen so far at ease. The makers of the upcoming MMOG from Mythic have responded with detail and good humour to the insightful queries you put to them. They were also considerate enough to label their responses, so you know exactly who has answered each question. So, please, read on for the responses from Mythic's Warhammer Online team.